Today was supposed to be Action Figure Epic, where I have the kids play out a scenario with action figures, but it was something of a bust. This has happened before, sometimes the morning activities just don't work out, and this time it was because I didn't give myself enough time to prepare a story beforehand. I did try improvising with the kids, but it was hard to keep their attention and to keep them focused on the lessons at hand I would hope to impart through this activity because I was just winging it as we went. In the spirit of radical honesty that I'm trying to get at with this blog, I'll go into it a little more.

They were playing Plants vs. Zombies, and a bunch of stuff was exploding.

The kids were already playing action figures with each other when I got up. They were playing pretty nicely with each other, all told, so I let them continue while I made breakfast and tried to brainstorm what the scenario could be for the morning activity later. But it is HARD to brainstorm in the morning. I'm not at my sharpest, that's for sure. This is why I traditionally suggest brainstorming the night before.

I asked Lyric which action figures he'd like to use for Action Figure Epic, and he brought out these three different sized Bane figures. He said one was the Daddy, one was the older brother, and one was the little brother. I thought that was pretty sweet, watching him model our family dynamics (despite the fact that my wife thinks Bane looks disturbingly like The Gimp from Pulp Fiction), and I think there could have been something there to build a scenario out of. But as we played, it just didn't pull together... Lyric kept on running out of the room and having characters get trapped in his room, and Zephyr was doing his own thing with other action figures, and I just couldn't corral the action.